Product Review: Central Desktop 2.0’s User Experience Transformed with UI Changes
I came from the internet heyday when the user experience was trumpeted as the holy grail of application development. As a designer I worked under a head of User Experience and the UI was a key focus of many development projects. That has never left me. I still believe products that have distanced themselves over competitors usually have a User Experience advantage like Apple in its design of iTunes and iPhone. If you look at the competitive SaaS market the winners over time will be those who focus on UI in regards to how it affects the User Experience. Central Desktop seems to understand this now. Originally although Central Desktop has been a good-value sharepoint alternative it has left something to be desired in the User Experience arena. It was a … Read entire article »
Filed under: Collaboration, Reviews
Product Strategy Review: Central Desktop 3 Year Product Roadmap
Central Desktop is still a young company that is growing rapidly. The next few years could be crucial in deciding whether it stays as contender or reaches the leader tier. I have listed a possible 3 year roadmap that would allow CD to handle customer requests while building on strategic plan to break into leader role through the enhanced features in collaboration, content management, document management, project portfolio management, social media and large enterprise features. This product development would require Q4 Roadmap planning and the following Roadmap activities: 10:16 PM Q4 2009 Research and Confirm 3 year Strategic Roadmap Q4 2009 Create and grow Consumer Product Council’s Tactical Roadmap Q1 2010 Begin development to Connect to Sharepoint like Alfresco (LAMP-based) (Growth Areas) Q3 2010 Build lite Project … Read entire article »
Filed under: Product Management, Reviews
Product Strategy Review: What about a Central Desktop Collaboration Appliance?
As part of my Product Strategy Review of Central Desktop for the large Enterprise, I got to thinking about the benefits of a Central Desktop Collaboration Appliance. Now as far as I know this doesn’t exist and isn’t on the radar anytime soon. But I am aware that some customers have asked for an on-premise CD solution. Listed below would be one possible solution to that request: ABSTRACT The Central Desktop Collaboration Appliance (CDCA) would be an on-premises collaboration solution suited to large enterprises. Within the Enterprise setting, the CDCA would be able to serve as the corporate portal and the departmental web sites, file servers and Content Management system, along with the future possibility of a growing list of other business applications. The CDCA would then be able to be scalable, providing … Read entire article »
Filed under: Product Management, Reviews
Product Strategy Review: Central Desktop for the Large Enterprise
When You Need Collaboration Up Quickly Central Desktop Works! I have had several projects at Fortune 500 companies where a collaboration tool was needed to be implemented but where a department couldn’t move forward because the company hadn’t decided which tool they were going to standardize on. For example, even though other departments were using Sharepoint, it was difficult for us to get approval for Sharepoint fast enough to meet our project deadlines. So what I ended up doing was just getting my own account setup of Central Desktop and used it as my own project library. It was actually one of my better decisions. Everyone was impressed how well organized the project was and it was easy to present at meetings on a projector screen. I would just login and … Read entire article »
Filed under: Collaboration, Product Management, Reviews
Review: Core Impact Pro for Penetration Testing
Core Impact Pro is a very high end tool that can be used effectively as part of an overall risk management program. As a penetration tool, it can be a good complement to any existing vulnerability assessment. Core Impact Pro can be used to scan and exploit systems using multiple modules for information gathering, exploitation, local information gathering, privilege escalation, pivoting, clean-up and reporting. A tool this powerful could definitely make many IT or network administrator’s nervous since it attempts not only to find but also to exploit vulnerabilities. But in actuality this tool only deploys agents in the target’s memory that act like flags. If the a vulnerability is not actually exploitable then Core Impact will not be able to place the flag agent in the target’s memory. This obviously confirms … Read entire article »
Filed under: IT Security, Reviews
Review: McAfee Vulnerability Manager
On one of my project assignments I had the opportunity to work with the McAfee Vulnerability Manager appliance (formerly Foundstone). It is a very powerful network vulnerability scanner. This appliance can do relatively quick discovery scans of network assets across the enterprise looking for possible threats that would be vulnerable to attack. It can also provide very detailed information if provided with proper credentials for the assets being scanned. This means that the system not only … Read entire article »
Filed under: Featured, IT Security, Reviews